BETA for dummies

[elSicomoro]

Can someone please give me a brief explanation of what BETA is? I know it's a computer language that seems to have evolved from Simula. Beyond that, I know nothing. I have a job interview Tuesday, and BETA knowledge is "preferred." I'd like to at least know a little about it.

Gracias.

[Pie]

I assume you've been here:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

BETA is a pure object-oriented language originating within the "Scandinavian School" in object-orientation where the first object-oriented language Simula was developed. From a technical perspective, BETA provides several unique features. Classes and Procedures are unified to one concept, a Pattern. Also, classes are defined as properties/attributes of objects. This means that a class cannot be instantiated without an explicit object context. A consequence of this is that BETA supports nested classes; and BETA's nested classes are indeed one of the primary sources of inspiration for Java's inner classes. Classes can be virtually defined (much like virtual methods can in most other object-oriented programming languages). Virtual entities (such as methods and classes) are never overwritten; instead they are refined or specialized. BETA supports the object-oriented perspective on programming and contains comprehensive facilities for procedural and functional programming. BETA has powerful abstraction mechanisms for supporting identification of objects, classification and composition. BETA is a strongly typed language like Simula, Eiffel and C++, with most of the type checking being carried out at compile-time. It is well known that it is not possible to obtain complete type checking at compile-time without sacrificing the expressiveness of the language. BETA aims to achieve an optimum balance between compile-time type checking and run-time type checking.

There is also a BETA homepage, with quick reference, terminology, code fragments, etc.

[elSicomoro]

Been to both...they confuse the shit out of me. I need someone to break it down for me into bite-sized pieces that I can swallow.

For example, when someone asks me what HTML is, I usually define it as a computer language that creates websites. I then either give an example of a piece of HTML code, or if I'm near a computer, I demonstrate it to them.

[SteveDallas]

What kind of job is this? What else are they looking for? I never heard of BETA before reading this thread, but I'd have to define it as "One of those languages developed by some theory-heavy computer scientists to demonstrate how they thing real-life languages should work... but not a language actually used by hardly anybody."

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

[Undertoad]

$100 says it's a proprietary software package developed for a specific purpose.

"We need you to be familiar with ASDF-QWER. It's an inventory management program. We use it every day along with both of the other companies in our industry. Because we use it every day, and have never been outside our particular workplace, we don't realize that nobody outside our industry has ever heard of it. We want potential employees to understand this particular package because the last person in this position didn't use it right - they always hit ENTER instead of TAB - and hosed our accounting system."

[elSicomoro]

This is the job.

[Undertoad]

http://ww2.betasystems.com/en/index.html

[elSicomoro]

*enlightened*

Thank you, sir...now it totally makes sense.